


Living Space

by blueincandescence



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-08-15 00:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8034394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: Workplace/Apartment AU. As much as Bruce is warned that his colleague at Stark Enterprises and new neighbor is bad news, he can't help but be drawn to the mysterious Natasha.





	Living Space

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt — 8/1/15 Anon — i saw you were taking brucenat fic prompts! can i request a same-apartment-building human au?
> 
> Continuity — AU, 2012 — Mixes plots from IM, IM2, TIH, TA, and AOU. Sans superheroes and SHIELD, but with similar backstories.
> 
> [cover art](http://blueincandescence.tumblr.com/post/150392037145/cover-art-for-my-brucenat-fics-ao3)   
> 

* * *

• 1 •

The apartment occupied a spot on the northern perimeter of Central Park at the very edge of the Harlem sprawl. Twenty-six stories, all told, the brick-faced Carbonell building housed thirteen individual condominiums. The uppermost apartment boasted five thousand square feet, four bedrooms, three baths, and private access to a rooftop terrace that offered sweeping views over the park and the cityscape, clear down to the unmistakable silhouette of Stark Tower. That sightline would come in handy should any of the building’s residents forget who was responsible for their largess.

As the story went, Maria Stark, née Carbonell, had insisted on the number thirteen as a tribute to her husband’s uncanny ability to turn misfortune into the other thing. Their surviving son had managed the same, despite a string of bad luck with the tenants on the floor itself. The previous occupant of apartment thirteen had been one Obadiah Shane, disgraced former Chief Operating Officer of Stark Industries, who now occupied a jail cell half a world away from the one occupied by Ivan Venko, disgraced former scientist and the latest in a long line of people to try and fail to take what Howard Stark had built.

The current occupant of apartment thirteen, one Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, was also disgraced, was also once a wanted man, hunted by the military for secrets he had resolved years ago to take to his grave. These days he envisioned that event happening later rather than sooner, due in no small part to the insistence of Tony Stark himself.

Along with the ridiculous salary, company car, designer wardrobe, and pretentious title, apartment thirteen was contractually obligated. Though the price was unlisted, similar units were selling upwards of ten million. Bruce had been unable to refuse any of it, just as he’d been unable to refuse Tony’s whiplash-inducing friendship.

So, here he was, hiding on the terrace to avoid the movers unpacking things he couldn’t imagine ever belonging to him.

Bruce had always been perverse in his ingratitude. Since the recovery of the Arc Reactor, he was a free man. He’d sealed that deal with a Congressional handshake with General Ross, no doubt under equal duress. More than his freedom, that handshake had meant that Betty Ross and Culver University were off the hook for his transgressions, both personal and professional. Every byte, every ounce of his previous research was destroyed. This was a new beginning. As Senior Director and Head of Biotechnology Research and Application, Bruce was to have a team of hundreds and a nearly bottomless budget at his disposal. There would be no pressure to cut corners, no reason to risk bodily harm. He could do good work here.

In the hazy, purple sunset, the buildings on the southern perimeter of Central Park rose up to resemble the modest peaks of the Sugarloaf Mountains in Rio de Janeiro. Bruce used to run every day from the hole in the wall he’d rented for twenty-five USD a month up to the top of a rolling peak and just stare and breathe and exist. That view was a privilege; this view was a luxury cage that he hadn’t earned.

He turned so he was looking at the terrace itself. Something of the peace he’d found on the run formed in his mind’s eye as a sprawling urban garden, though so far all he had was a single potted flower.

The orchid shouldn’t by any means be able to grow in this climate. Betty had worked four months just to cultivate the bacteria for the soil. It had come to him hand delivered by a Culver University botanist who had given him strict instructions but no card. It was only fair. He hadn’t written one for Betty when he’d sent the seeds. She deserved to stop wondering why he hadn’t waited for her. He suspected she’d known that for years; now she was certain.

There was a sealed bottle of scotch on the kitchen counter that could help him figure out how he felt about that. The act of resisting it was a neat excuse to sidestep the issue entirely.

Bruce ran a thumb over the corners of the one card he had gotten that day. It had been taped to the bottle, which came with a set of tumblers he would be expected to break out whenever Tony felt like waltzing through his front door. Scrawled on the card were two words that brimmed with the material horror of high expectations — ‘Welcome home.’

• 2 •

The Stark Industries biotech department was as new as Bruce was, so half of his team were fresh hires in biochemistry and engineering who were eager to jump right into the projects Bruce had prioritized. The other half were Stark Industries veterans pulled from varying departments who had certain ideas about hierarchy and pecking orders that made Bruce wish he never had to show his face outside the lab.

But he did, disproportionately so he could make the walk to Tony’s private elevator. In the penthouse labs, he spent the requisite thirty percent of his work day playing devil’s advocate and reminding Tony to step back from the explosions. The fact that this collaboration was the best part of his entire day notwithstanding, it did invite workplace hostility.

Which is why, three weeks in, Bruce was not at all surprised to find a cartoon taped to the inside of the private elevator. A caricature of Tony Stark, grinning under a pair of gleaming Ray-Bans, holding a leash attached to an ape-like creature sporting glasses, a labcoat, and Bruce’s face.

He dropped the cartoon on the bar as he dropped himself into his usual stool.

“Shirt is a nice touch,” Tony said, sparing a millisecond for a glance. “Green’s your color.”

“So, I should take this as a compliment.”

Tony slid Bruce his Shirley Temple — one time he’d declined scotch at ten a.m., one time — and came around the bar. “You have people who resent you almost as much as they obsess over you. Welcome to success, Banner.” He clinked Bruce’s glass, still on the bar top. “Even you couldn’t outrun it.”

With a snort, Bruce drank to that. His resentment-based obsession with Stark Industries’ clean energy success was what had gotten him a free ride to the penthouse, after all.

“Speaking of the downsides to recognized genius,” Tony said, using a tablet to start up his JARVIS program. “Have you met the woman in apartment twelve?”

“No.” Truth be told, Bruce hadn’t met a single one of his neighbors, and he’d like to keep it that way. A thought crossed his mind that sent him digging under his collar. “Please tell me you’re not trying to set me up.”

Tony’s laugh held an edge of warning. “The woman in apartment twelve is not for you.”

Thirty seconds of whirling processors later, a holographic ball of light appeared between Bruce and Tony. It blinked in time to the automated voice: “Say a command, Mr. Stark.”

“File, hidden, Black Widow,” Tony enunciated.

The automated system, dubbed ‘Just a Rather Very Intelligent System’ or JARVIS, repeated the command as the lights in the ceiling shifted to form images of a lingerie model with stunning, wide green eyes and red curls that cascaded over milky white shoulders. Definitely Tony’s type. Bruce reached up to scroll through her impressive list of credentials.

“What do you think?”

What he thought was that Tony was already one lucky son of a bitch to have Pepper Potts, COO extraordinaire, not so secretly in love with him and needed to put down the booze and recognize that fact. What he said was, “Natalie Rushman might just give you a run for your money.”

“Oh, she has. This woman? Is a menace.” Tony clicked a button and the lingerie model became a straight-haired punk wearing fingerless gloves and handcuffs. “This is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. She’s a Russian hacking prodigy, among other bouts of infamy. She posed as Rushman — ” The next photograph was a paparazzi shot of her handing Tony a drink in skin-tight leopard-print dress. “ — to become my personal assistant. I suspected she was working a honeytrap on me for Vanko. Turns out she was sent by the CIA to ‘protect me.’” That got air quotes. “So, long story short, I stole her from the US government and made her my head of security.” He clicked again, and the woman was pictured in a Stark Industries official ID, her no-nonsense stare so unlike any of the previous photographs.

“‘Natasha Romanoff,’” Bruce read. Her full registry of accomplishments moved her out of the impressive category and straight into intimidating.

“Goodbye mother Russia, hello capitalist piggies.” Tony heaved himself on the couch. “She’s a menace.”

“Okay,” Bruce drew out. “I’ll keep my distance?”

Tony ground down on an ice cube. “You might want to fix yourself a stronger drink, buddy. Romanoff is back from leave as of tomorrow, and — sorry to say — I can almost guarantee she’ll be gunning straight for you.”

“Me?” Bruce pointed at himself. He fumbled for a reason why such a woman would ever take an interest in him, even a nefarious one. “Did she have some objection to hiring me?”

“No, she called you an asset after the Arc Reactor fiasco.” Tony waved that off, but leaned forward to tell Bruce, stone-faced, “When she comes for you, it’ll be personal.”

Bruce found himself leaning forward, too, elbows braced on his knees. A preternaturally gorgeous woman with a least four identities and the alias ‘Black Widow’ had a personal vendetta against him? “Why?”

“Jesus, Banner, don’t sound so damn compelled — she’s coming for your apartment.”

“Oh.” Bruce sat back. “Honestly, Tony, if it’s a problem, she can have it.”

“Not, ‘oh’; not ‘she can have it.’ The occupant of apartment thirteen of the Carbonell building makes a statement about this company, it always has. Dr. Bruce Banner in apartment thirteen tells the shareholders that clean energy is what we do now. My mysterious head of security in apartment thirteen? That’s a declaration of war, and she knows it.”

“But for some unexplained reason she’s under the impression that the apartment should be hers?”

Tony squirmed at that. “I gave her a tour before the renovations, when she moved into the building. I might have said some things — she never did. She’s impossible to get a read on. You’ll see. But this, this I can tell. She wants that apartment.”

“You can tell. She hasn’t even asked for it?”

“Romanoff does not ask for things. She orchestrates them. And I won’t have you run out of town by some schemer with ice in her veins.” Tony held his scotch against his mouth like a security blanket. “Woman’s a menace.”

“You mentioned that.” Bruce wished Tony would end the holograph so he could stop darting glances at her photograph. “So why hire her?”

“Like I always say, keep your friends rich — ” he toasted Bruce “ — and  your enemies rich” — he toasted Natasha — “’cause God knows karma’s a bitch.”

“A poet and a philosopher.” Bruce kept his tone neutral, but his hand was reaching behind the bar for that bottle of scotch.

“Finally, the appropriate response,” Tony said, hopping up to get a refill.

Bruce sighed as he poured. He was not a man cut out for corporate sociopathy, nor was he cut out to be the middleman in a feud of broken promises between ex-lovers or whatever this thing between Tony and this beguiling force of a woman was.

Tony was right to be worried, though, because the part of Bruce’s brain responsible for self-sabotage had perked up at the thought of being run out of town. A bite from the Black Widow would make for one hell of an excuse, were it to come to that.

• 3 •

A rustle of silk and there she was, the woman in apartment twelve. She was standing with one slender hand lingering on the ornate wooden bannister and the other dangling a gift bag against the hem of her long skirt. Cropped red waves fell to her chin, framing a small smile. Bruce realized with a jolt of dread for his future mental acuity that Natasha Romanoff in the flesh was far prettier than any of her pictures. She was softer, warmer. More inviting. God help him.

Bruce could imagine the picture he made himself, just his scruffy head poking out from behind a bin overflowing with recycling and his mouth half open. He closed it. Then opened it again. A dozen lines flitted through his mind, from vaguely creepy to full-on inappropriate — ‘I know who you are,’ ‘Your new hairstyle suits you,’ ‘Why don’t you save us both the trouble and just move in with me?’ He swallowed them all and remembered with some bitterness that he still had his pride, if nothing else.

“Welcome home,” he said, a minute and a half too late. “From your trip,” he hastened to add. “Or leave, I mean. You’ve been away.” He could have bounced his head off the bin. Dignity and pride were not the same thing.

Natasha’s eyes glittered in the glow of the ornamental light fixtures. “Good to be home,” she said, her voice low and pleasing.

The intended effect, he told himself. It had only been eight hours since he’d been warned the Black Widow would be gunning for him. He used adjusting the contents of the bin as an excuse to unstick his eyes from hers.

His aim was further helped by the ding of the elevator and the presence of the longtime caretaker of the Carbonell building. Inna, the lines of her tunic as impeccable as ever, was all apologies for being five minutes later than usual. Bruce reassured her as he handed over the bin with some reluctance, now completely exposed to Natasha’s gaze. He became all too aware that Inna towered over him, that his feet were bare, that his shirt was untucked and billowing. Through the box that had held his gardening sheers, Bruce caught the smile the older woman directed toward the woman in apartment twelve. They exchanged goodbyes in Russian. The word Tony had used — orchestrate — came to mind.

Bruce clasped his hands over his shirt tails, feeling distinctly, ridiculously like prey drawn out into an open field. He edged toward his door as he turned to face Natasha. “Are you here about my security, Ms. Romanoff?”

“No, no,” she said, stepping forward. “Inna has the building well in hand. This is a personal visit.” Natasha stopped in arm’s reach and held out the gift bag.

He took it by the edges, the smell alone activating his sweet tooth. The gift bag was warm in his hands, the gesture cold. “A baker and a spy,” he said, going for placid. “And a legal aid and a model — ”

“And a criminal,” Natasha finished. “That’s baklava, but a different style than you must have had when you were hiding out in Turkey two years ago. The woman who ran the orphanage I was raised in was Russian-Azeri.”

Bruce blinked at the gift bag, at Tony’s menace. He’d expected her to be coy, so she was giving him unsentimental honesty. She was telling him she knew his past, knew something of it herself. Honest or not, it was a low move to employ for a corporate powerplay on a symbolic piece of real estate. Growing anger had him gripping the bag.

Her attention moved over his shoulder, into the foyer. “You’re planning a garden on the terrace,” she said. Those bright green eyes didn’t miss a detail. “That’ll be nice. I’ve never really had a place of my own where I could grow one. I wouldn’t know where to start.” The last part was infused with self-awareness.

Bruce didn’t either, but that was the whole point of this conversation. No doubt Tony had envisioned the Black Widow showing up on his door in next to nothing one night and breaking his heart with just as much blunt force. This sharing of intimacies was so much worse.

“Thank you for the welcome.” His lip twitched into a hint of a curl. “And I’m sorry about the — ” He groped for a neutral term. “The misunderstanding. I understand that this is the apartment you wanted.” Bruce braced himself for a lie.

The smile she’d put on for her overture of friendship turned wispy. “Well, I don’t every time get what I want.” Another point of commonality that should have seemed forced, but even his level of cynicism couldn’t withstand the sad truth of that sentiment. She nodded at the gift, backing away. “Nice to finally meet you, Dr. Banner.”

Whatever agenda she’d had, she wasn’t pressing it. He felt he needed to say something as she started down the stairs but where to start? She was disingenuous or he was a miserable neighbor — no awards in either case. He moved away from the safety of his door frame and edged toward the railing. Her face was expressionless, but there was something in the way her fingers slid across the wood grain that struck him, again, as wistful. She passed the twelfth floor and kept going, coming into view at the eleventh, tenth floors. At the ninth, she paused on the landing and lifted her eyes to meet his. Bruce thought if anyone would notice his color from all the way down there it was probably her. He raised the gift bag, realizing it doubled nicely as a white flag, and tried to look grateful.

One wisp of a smile, and Natasha was out of sight but not out of mind. Intrigue and trepidation had merged to become full-blown curiosity. A dangerous temptation, in his experience. But curiosity had never been something Bruce was able to ignore.


End file.
